Biodiversity and its conservation

A National Park (NP) is a natural habitat formally notified by a state government as a National Park because of its ecological, faunal, floral, geomorphological or zoological significance, and it carries the strictest legal protection of any Indian conservation category: no human activity is permitted inside a National Park except what the Chief Wildlife Warden of the state specifically allows, under the conditions set out in Chapter IV of the Wildlife Protection Act (WPA), 1972. National Parks are large areas of scenic and natural beauty maintained purely for scientific, educational and recreational purposes, never for commercial resource extraction, and activities such as development, forestry, poaching, hunting, grazing and cultivation are all barred within their boundaries. India currently has 104 National Parks, together covering 40,501 km2 — about 1.23% of the country's total geographical area, per the National Wildlife Database (August 2018) — with Assam's Kaziranga National Park, protecting the one-horned rhinoceros, as a well-known example. Tamil Nadu contributes five of these parks (Table 12.1): G …

A Wildlife Sanctuary (WLS) can be notified by a state government over any area — other than land already part of a reserve forest or territorial waters — that has adequate ecological, faunal, floral, geomorphological, natural or zoological significance, specifically to protect endangered faunal species; unlike a National Park, some restricted human activities are permitted inside a sanctuary under Chapter IV of the WPA 1972, including ecotourism (as long as animal life remains undisturbed), collection of forest produce, regulated timber harvesting, and even private land ownership. India has 544 wildlife sanctuaries in total, covering 118,918 km2 — about 3.62% of the country's geographical area, per the National Wildlife Database (2017) — functioning as tracts where wild animals can take refuge without being hunted or poached; Kerala's Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary, famous for its Indian tiger and Asiatic elephant populations, is a well-known example. Table 12.2 lists five prominent Tamil Nadu sanctuaries: Vedanthangal Lake Birds WLS (1936, Chengalpet), Mudumalai WLS (1942, Nilgiris), Point Calimere WLS (1967, Nagapattinam), Indira Gandhi/Annamalai WLS (1976, Coimbatore) and Mundanthurai WLS (1977, Tirunelveli). India's most prominent species-specific sanctuary programme, Project Tiger, was launched by the Government of India in 1973 at Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand, to protect the national animal; it began with just 9 tiger reserves and has since grown to 50, run as an ongoing Centrally Sponsored Scheme of the Ministry of Environment and Forests that gives states central assistance for tiger conservation within designated reserves, aiming to secure a viable wild population of Bengal tigers while preserving areas of broader biological importance. The Nation …

A Biosphere Reserve (BR) is an international designation awarded by UNESCO to representative parts of natural and cultural landscapes spanning large terrestrial or coastal/marine ecosystems, or a combination of both; each one is designated to address biodiversity conservation, economic and social development, and the maintenance of associated cultural values all at once, making biosphere reserves living demonstrations of how people and nature can coexist while respecting each other's needs. India's Biosphere Reserve programme is guided by UNESCO's Man and Biosphere (MAB) programme, to which India is a signatory, and the national scheme was implemented by the Government of India in 1986; the country now has 18 Biosphere Reserves. Tamil Nadu shares in three of them: Agasthyamalai (spanning Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala), Nilgiri (spanning Tamil Nadu and Kerala) and Gulf of Mannar (wholly within Tam …

A sacred grove, or sacred wood, is any grove of trees regarded as being of special religious importance to a particular culture, and such groves feature across many cultures worldwide, not just in India. In practice they function as community-protected patches of natural vegetation, conserved not through formal legal notification but through sustained local religious and cultural belief — giving India's in-situ conservation toolkit a locally-driven, faith-based complement to the government-managed Na …

Two Tamil Nadu institutions illustrate ex-situ conservation in concrete, operational detail. The Arignar Anna Zoological Park at Vandalur, spread across 602 hectares of reserve forest, is one of the largest zoos in South-East Asia by area, housing around 2,500 wild animals across nearly 180 species of mammals, birds and reptiles; 34 years into its operation it has established itself as a genuinely successful ex-situ conservation and captive-breeding centre for endangered species including the Royal Bengal Tiger, Lion-tailed Macaque, Nilgiri Langur and Grey Wolf. Beyond captive breeding, the zoo runs public-facing features such as a Butterfly Park, Children's Park, Walk-Through Aviary, Lion and Deer Safari, Forest Museum and Interpretation Centre that together draw more than 21 lakh visitors a year, and it has strengthened protection through CCTV monitoring (branded 'Zoo e-Eye'), pioneered round-the-clock animal live-streaming for the first time anywhere in the world, and introduced a mobile app for ticketing, navigation and animal information alongside its 'Zoo Ambassador' school outreach programme — which trained over 400 students in 2018 — and a dedicated Rescue Centre for injured or distressed wild animals. The Madras Crocodile Bank Trust and Centre for Herpetology, founded in 1976 near Chennai by the herpetologist Romulus Whitaker and a handful of fellow conservationists specifically to save India's dwindling crocodilian population, promotes the conservation of reptiles and amphibians and their h …

The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, known in short as the CBD, was signed by India together with 172 other nations on 29 December 1993, following its adoption at the 1992 'Earth Summit' in Brazil. The CBD represented an attempt to build an international programme for conserving and sustainably using the world's biological resources, and this historic treaty rests on three linked principles that the chapter names explicitly: it recognises the 'sovereign right of nations over their own genetic resources', it establishes the idea of 'appropriate access to genetic resources' for others who wish to use them, and it commits parties to the 'fair and equitable sharing' of any benefits that arise from using those gen …

The Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) was established in 1916 to promote the survey, exploration and research that advances the country's knowledge of the many facets of its own biodiversity. Its objectives, as the chapter lists them, are fivefold: exploration, survey, inventorying and monitoring of faunal diversity across India's various states, ecosystems and protected areas; periodic review of the conservation status of threatened and endemic species; preparation of the Red Data Book and the Fauna of India; biological studies focused on selected species of particular importance; and the maintenance and continued development of India's National Zoological C …